“Stanisław Zalewski survived Auschwitz, Mauthausen, and Gusen as a political prisoner. Director Magdalena Żelasko returned with him to the original locations, let him tell his story, and gave him plenty of time to convey his message. For three years, she accompanied him on his travels and then told his story largely chronologically, without dramatic effects. She collected 100 hours of material. In the end, it became 100 minutes of film.”

“If you’re looking for high gloss and grand staging à la Netflix, this film is not for you. And that’s a good thing, because Magdalena Żelasko simply lets her protagonist tell his story. He has a lot to say, even about comparatively banal things, such as how the prisoners in Auschwitz shared their daily bread in groups of five or how they were robbed of the most nutritious parts of the soup pot by the Kapos using a ladle trick. He also openly addresses the topic of sexuality, which was omnipresent in the camp. The film has its strongest moments in Gusen, of all places, which was forgotten for decades as a “satellite camp” of Mauthausen, where Zalewski was forced to participate in armaments production as a prisoner. The increasing emptiness of institutional Holocaust remembrance becomes too tangible there.”